My kitchen essentials

Luke French, chef-owner of Sheffield restaurant Jöro (jororestaurant.co.uk)

My most-used utensil is my long cooking tweezers. They are basically fancy tongs but so much easier to use than the big, clumsy standard ones. I use them to grab, flip, turn, stir, whisk, eat... you name it, just like extra-long chopsticks! Can you tell I love them?

I hate waste, especially plastic, so we have amassed quite a large collection of plastic containers. I always try to reuse them in one way or another, whether it’s in the kitchen or greenhouse. They’re very handy and keep everything in order. The most expensive thing in my kitchen? My knives. They’re all hand forged by a local maker called Simon Maillet (simonmaillet.com), a proper cool French dude who collaborates with me on making Japanese-style kitchen knives and utensils. I use them for everything from boning fish to vegetable prep. The quality is so high that, if you take good care of them, they will last you a lifetime.

I couldn’t live without my barbecues. I’ve always been a fire bug and I love the flavour from cooking over an open fire. You just can’t beat it. I have five different ones, but have big love for my Kamado Joe (kamadojoe.co.uk). At Jöro, pretty much all of the meat and fish, and a lot of our vegetables, are cooked on or finished over fire, and all of our wood and charcoal is sustainably sourced from single-species British woodlands.